Campaign History

The Save Childhood Movement (SCM)'s Early Years Education Group's 'Too Much, Too Soon Campaign' was launched on the 12th of September, 2013 with an Open Letter to the Telegraph signed by 127 senior figures and early years experts including Sir Al Aynsley-Green, the former Children’s Commissioner for England, Lord Richard Layard, director of the Well-Being Programme at the London School of Economics and Dr David Whitebread, Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Cambridge. The campaign was given front page prominence in the Telegraph and, over the next few days, achieved an extraordinarily high level of national media coverage/debate - that you can see here.

The signatories expressed widespread concern about the subsequent nature of the response from the DfE, the denial of legitimacy of the concerns raised, the denigration of the credibility of those challenging current policy and the distortion of what was actually being said. In April 2014 a further letter was sent to all the party leaders by a growing alliance of concerned organisations. This letter was accompanied by a letter of support from the Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg. In July 2014 both Michael Gove and Liz Truss were replaced, but the core issues remain the same.

The group then decided to turn its attention to the impending introduction of Baseline Assessment and a separate 'Better without Baseline' campaign was developed to tackle the issue. A highly powerful alliance actively collaborated to back the campaign, with the movement leading the strategic development. In April 2016 the government backed down on its plans.

8th April, 2016 - Ministers back down

Continuing the challenge

In Scotland the Upstart Campaign was then launched in 2016 to challenge the School Starting Age

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